Vancouver and San Francisco are iconic West Coast cities with many things in common -- including large numbers of people addicted to hard drugs. In recent years, Vancouver has been at the forefront of new approaches to addiction, including safe injection sites.

Support for establishing safe injection facilities (SIFs) -- places where people can use their own illicit drugs under medical supervision -- is growing in the United States, but the backlash against the model has been fierce.

Dr. Julio Montaner is a UBC-Killam Professor of Medicine and the UBC-St. Paul's Hospital Foundation chair in AIDS Research. Dr. Kora DeBeck is an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University's School of Public Policy and research scientist at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

Former tent city residents living at 844 Johnson St. say even with rules requiring guests to sign in and restricting overnight stays, the building is crowded with non-residents, including some surreptitiously subletting rooms.

It’s hard to go a day in Canada without hearing about at least one of two types of drugs – but for vastly different reasons. One class of drug — opioids — kills four people a day in British Columbia. The other — cannabis — will be legal for adult purchase and consumption by this time next year.